.Com has over 150 million registrations 35 years after its launch.
There are now officially over 150 million .com domain names registered.
Verisign (NASDAQ: VRSN) updated its .com domain base statistics earlier today, revealing that .com hit the big milestone.
Just 20 years ago, there were only 10 million domains registered across .com, .net and .org combined. People said “all of the good domains are taken” back then, yet people have found another 140 million-plus .com domains to register.
Verisign, the registry for .com domains, has been a huge benefactor of the boom in domain names. It holds the sole contract for managing the .com registry and is rewarded with as much as $7.85 for each .com registered. It is contractually allowed to increase its prices starting this year.
In 2000, Verisign had 2,291 employees and grossed $475 million. It has sold off most of its businesses since then, focusing solely on running registries. Last year it grossed $1.23 billion with just 872 employees.
The rate of growth in .com has certainly slowed, however. Ten years ago, in September 2010, there were 118 million registered .com domains.
Cool. 150,000,000 x $7.85 (wholesale) = $1.177 billion yr gross revenue to the registry. Let’s not even consider .net too.
Meanwhile, only 300 .com sales over $100 are reported per day.
2020 is on track to see a total of $80,000,000 in .com aftermarket sales for the entire year (down 20%). Many of which are domainers buying.
This means .com registry is making ~15x more than domainers.
I don’t believe that we only know 1/10 of sales. I feel MAYBE 1/5th, and most of that concentrated at the high end.
What was that about nTLD (NEW) registries being the one making all the $? Check yourself .comr.
In 2 years .com registry (Verisign) will earn *more* than -all 25 years- worth of known aftermarket .com sales as reported by namebio.com!
Where do you get $80M for the .com aftermarket for this year?
Escrow.com did $141M in the first half of this year alone, and the bulk of that is .com.
Don’t disagree with the sentiment of your comment, but when you throw out an obviously bad number, it spoils the rest of your argument.
I said I am going by namebio.com
Escrow # I am not sure, is it purely domains, or websites mixed in? Website sales is a very big market too. Not one domainers embrace. I been ran off from domaining trying to sell websites. “This is a domain community – not websites” That’s the attitude.
https://www.dnforum.com/threads/why-doesnt-websites-for-sale-have-a-distinguish-forum.574078/#post-2306902
These are the types of response you get from domainer ‘moderators’ when you try and bring domaining up into websites and what not.
Very unwelcoming/unproviding to the industry which they are almost tied to the hip with IMO.
So really, is this $140m purely domains, or websites too? I would like to know!
Because, if you add in websites, while in large, domaining rejects dealing with websites…well…that upsets me even more.
Website market is outside of domaining knowledge (IMO), because domaining has rejected/neglected such folks. They don’t want to be involved with domaning platforms.
Maybe the data you are looking at is misleading. I’ve been trying to talk about websites more.
https://tldinvestors.com/2020/05/2020-market-trends-with-flippa-ceo-blake-hutchison.html
This report from April 2020 says website BUYER (for websites) registration are up 32% at flippa (FFS)!
Big number. Domaining largely unaware. Unfortunate.
So I am wondering, is this large escrow amount all about domains? Or mostly websites? Website sale are exploding and .com is faltering IMO.
I was mocked by mods for saying websites would explode. Well, couple months later 32% increase in buyers…Mocked me.
It’s important to know. Again, website sales are a BIG deal.
Q1 definitely involved a lot of website sales at Escrow.com. But in Q2 it dropped a lot. In both cases it was less than half of the transaction revenue.
I did say 1/5 (bigger) sales are NOT reported. That insinuated escrow.com anyhow. I’m not so dense to think such unknown (which I suggest) BIG sales aren’t going though escrow.com. They are. that’s where most the 1/5 derived from! For domaining purposes, those are ‘unknown’ sales, because the very details.
I just didn’t know the number because im not sure of the absolute facts.
I’m on your website (lifesavings.online) and all the websites offered are well in excess of the $7.85 being charged for a .com address no? I see a lot of $20-$70 websites (3x to 9x the cost). Does it make sense for you to cut your rates?
On your recommendation i went to yourself.com. Turns out that website is for sale – for $500,000! Umm, i’ll take my $7.85 site from Verisign thank you!
.COM, the KING of Domains!
Hello Andrew,
Been searching for a graph of the .COM registration numbers from the start to 2020 but couldn’t find one anywhere.
It would be very interesting to see.
I looked for the same thing. Couldn’t find it. Ended up having to piece together data from Verisign, Network Solutions, and ICANN just to get what I did.
Is domainnamestat.com accurate? Showing close to 200mm
The numbers for .com, .net and .org are inaccurate, so I’d question the rest of its numbers.